The Ocean Vehicles Unit (VIMAS) at Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN), organized the 14th edition of the Glider School, an international initiative to promote the knowledge and development on marine autonomous vehicles and the consolidation of PLOCAN as a gliderport facility for the Eastern Central Atlantic.
In the 14th edition, which has had the support of the European MINKE project, students from France (LSCE/IPSL), Brazil (PETROBRAS), the United States (Rutgers University), the United Kingdom (NOC, UCL, UEA), the Netherlands (NIOZ) and Spain (ULPGC, EHU) who have had a teaching staff made up of technicians from leading ocean-glider manufacturers (Teledyne Webb Research, ALSEAMAR, Offshore Sensing, AutoNaut, UW/CSCS) as well as from leading manufacturers of the main subsystems that these autonomous ocean observing platforms includes (sensors, telemetry, etc.) such as CLS (France),
NORTEK (Norway), Rockland Scientific (Canada), RBR (Canada), Ocean Sonics (Canada), Hydroptic (Francia), SEICHE (United Kingdom), ProOceanus (Canada), among others.
The five main ocean-glider technologies: Slocum, Seaglider, Seaexplorer, Sailbuoy and Autonaut, together with renowned operators sharing their experience (OceanOps, OGS, Rutgers University, etc.), met at the Glider School 2024, a forum for highly specialized training in cutting-edge marine technologies addressed to a more efficient and sustainable ocean-observing strategy. The growing development of the use of this type of marine observing technologies and the number of vehicles has enabled to open a regulatory process for the unmanned vessels navigation framework, an aspect that has also been addressed in this edition of the Glider School.
The Glider School maintains its main objective to train ocean-glider technicians and pilots, as well as to show the evolution of sensors, presenting the new generation of instruments associated with these technologies, and derived scientific applications, services for the Blue Economy or the contribution to regulatory framework strategy in Spain for unmanned maritime navigation according to the international context in this domain.
The training activity includes both theoretical and practical sessions in glider lab and open waters of Gran Canaria, an update of the state of the art, the international dimensioning at user-community and applications level, as well as the contribution of the Glider School through the training of students from worldwide, reaching with the 14th edition two hundred and thirty trained people overall.
PLOCAN is member of initiatives such as EuroGOOS-Glider Task Team (GTT) and EGO-gliderport, joined by highly specialized infrastructures, with technical capabilities and the provision of both operational and training services related to ocean-glider technology. Both respond to international and multidisciplinary initiatives, made up of members from companies as well as public, governmental and academia institutions, and which currently have a global dimension including users from the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, among others. EGO and EuroGOOS-GTT promote the coordinated use and technological improvements of these autonomous ocean observation devices through missions and experiments, tutorials, schools, technical notes, thematic forums, conferences, as well as data availability, communication protocols, within the context of dissemination and applied use of the information generated by the devices in a wide range of socioeconomic sectors of the marine-maritime domain at global level.
